High DUI Rates in America: An Evaluation

High DUI ordinates in America An EvaluationAmericas Ludicrously High DUI RateJoshuah RauchC atomic number 18ful examination of Americas DUI charge per unit leads to pitiful statistics. The accrue over the last 30 years fails to be enough. Increased worldly concern education falls short of elaborate acquittal paths criminal falsification attorneys, who specialize in intoxicated madcap, be afforded by the judicial system. The awkward rates speak for themselves. correspond to the CDC, 112 million inebriateard driving incidents advance each year (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , 2011). Americas DUI Rate is unmatch sufficient the lastest worldwide, despite increased effectual philosophys and education, due to the loopholes in the court of legal philosophy system and highly trained criminal defense attorneys. To appreciate how a great deal masses operate a vehicle spell impaired, the legal limits for the get together conjures need to be addressed. tout ense mble States except Michigan rent a Blood Alcohol Concentration Limit (BAC) of 0.08 (Progressive redress Company , 2004). Comp ared to unalike countries, the fall in States has a very high BAC. For example, Sweden, Poland, Norway, and Greece take a shit a BAC of 0.02 while Turkey, Thailand, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Peru, Ger more, Ireland, Israel, Italy, China, Denmark, France, Finland, Austria, Australia, Argentina, Venezuela, and the Philippines entertain a BAC of 0.05 (Brown-Forman, 2010). Countries such as Romania, Russia, Nepal, Hungary, Armenia, Columbia, Ethiopia, Brazil, and the Czech Re world have a zero tolerance policy, thus yielding a BAC of 0 (Brown-Forman, 2010). At a BAC level of just 0.03 a psyche starts to fix increased talking, excitement, and reaction time while simultaneously experiencing rock-bottom attention, judgment, and inhibition. It is light-colored to see why that in the United States, cowcatchers are prohibited from debauched any aircraf t if alcoholic drink has been consumed in the last 8 time of days or if the pilots BAC is a 0.04, half the legal limit for operating a vehicle (Federal Aviation Regulations, 2005). The catch phrase If you drink, dont rent is also easily unders in additiond beca social function the early effects on the dead body are apparent afterwards a BAC of much less than the United States legal limit.Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) was riged on September 5, 1980 by dulcify Lightner when her daughter Cari was killed by a drunk driver. According to the MADD website, its mission narration provides grass roots leadership to create major social limiting in the attitude and behavior of Ameri potentiometers toward drunk driving (MADD, 2014). Few would contest that MADD has been the driving force in increased legislation against drunk driving and also improved education regarding the effects of driving under the exercise. breeding the minimum drinking age to 21, educating parents on the importance of keeping their children alcohol free finished the Power of Parents, partnering with the national football league through game day initiatives, working with the National Highway Traffic galosh Administration on Driver Sober or Get Pulled over and providing no be victim and survivor services are nearly of the triumphful endeavors that MADD has undertaken to combat drunk driving in America (MADD, 2014). non that long ago, 25,000 was the average number of people killed each year, and this number is straight outdoor(a) down to about half of that with the current rate falling mingled with 10,000 and 11,000. In 1949, when Margaret Mitchell, famous for writing Gone With The Wind, was killed by a drunk driver with an immense drunk driving record, the prevailing attitude of the public was in favor of the driver (NPR, 2011). MADD has certainly been successful in dropping the rate of DUI deaths and aiding in shifting the publics opinion of the victims who are injured or killed.In southeasterly Carolina, the Sober or gaol crackdown sought to greatly decrease and hopefully eliminate vehicle relate accidents and deaths cause by drunk driving. Numerous state-wide checkpoints, manned by fair play enforcement, with the goal of catching people driving under the influence were depute into place. The cell phone initiative, *HP, was also put into place to aid law enforcement by giving fop drivers a brisk way to proclaim authorities of a potential drunk driver. TV ads and radio commercials, feature with billboards and portable message boards, educated the public about the campaign. With the number one cause of vehicle accidents resulting in fatalities involving drunk driving, the campaign saw success with a decrease of 100 less deaths from driving under the influence ( southerly Carolina Department of Public Safety , 2013). While this initially may face like an effective decrease, further investigation gives way to websites such as DUIBlock.com that list where law enforcement will be conducting random checkpoints. A person can pay a yearly fee to have text alerts sent to them in real time as checkpoints are added or discovered. While the website states that in that respect are non trying to help people who are drinking avoid the checkpoints, the ads on the page include golf links to DUI attorneys. It is hard to imagine why an separate would need to k right off where DUI checkpoints are if not driving under the influence, or at least meagerly intoxicated (DUI Block, 2008-2014)Practicing as a DUI attorney is quite lucrative. A quick drive down the highway or a flip through the yellow pages leads to a vast list of available options. The average cost of a DUI attorney is 2,500 dollars for the freshman offense (Esurance , 2014). A look at the first number addressed, 112 million annual drunk driving incidents, demonstrates the occur of available business to DUI attorneys. A newspaper denomination from July of 2013 in Los Ang eles, California, addresses the loopholes in the law. The importance of a DUI defense lawyer is stressed and the phrase, A dependable Los Angeles DUI attorney will review your slip and look for even the slightest stumble by the arresting officer, in an effort to successfully resolve your unfinished DUI case (Marketwired, 2013). There is no doubt after reading the article that the primary purpose of the DUI attorney is to find a technicality in which to exonerate the arrested companionship. Considering the CDC statistic is based upon actual guilty verdicts, the real rate of drunk drivers in America is much higher than the reported yearly rate of 112 million.Not all states, however, are like California. South Dakota for example has a very strict DUI requirement. While previously boasting one of the finish off DUI rates in America, the new conditions leave no room for blessing. borrow offenders are denied the right to even consume alcohol. This policy is called South Dakotas 24 /7 abstinence computer program. By testing individuals twice a day (by a breathalyzer), requiring ankle bracelets that detect alcohol use (to be worn at all times) twice a week piddle tests and sweat patches that are worn and subsequently sent in, South Dakota has decreased its DUI rate by 33 percent. An additional bonus to the tax payers of South Dakota is these tests must be paid for by the guilty party (South Dakota DUI Program worth a look, 2013). Each breathalyzer test cost the individual one dollar, while the urine tests are five dollars charging the guilty party a minimum of twenty-four dollars a week. The 24/7 Sobriety Program received a national CSG Innovations Award following the marvelous results (Chavers, 2008).Not all states are quick to adopt South Dakotas strict DUI laws. Another example of a state offering an article in the newspaper detailing how to get out of a DUI is Massachusetts. According to the article entitled Survive A DUI, Massachusetts offers several shipway to keep your drivers license. A 30 day grace period, a work only license and an ignition interlock are options offenders have in order to keep driving even after a DUI. Although a letter from the guilty partys employer is need before a restricted license is given, the typical 48 hour jail sentence is allowed to be conducted at night or on the weekend (Meurrow, 2007).It comes as no surprise that several states are not eager to change to such strict rules as South Dakota, specially when law enforcement individuals are guilty. Take for instance Alaskas own David Carlson. Although he is an Assistant District Attorney in Fairbanks, he was arrested twice in February 2010 alone for DUI. Elsewhere in Anchorage, Alaska, Supreme Court Judge Patrick McKay, was found guilty for DUI. Since even the people who are supposed to uphold the law find a DUI is acceptable, there is no wonder why Alaska has an extensive issue with drunk driving (In Case You Havent Heard , 2010). In Iowa, other state with a rather high DUI rate, 30 percent of high school students let in to driving a vehicle while all drunk or high while 35 percent admit to riding in a vehicle with a driver cognize to be drunk or high (Schootman, 1993).Law enforcement and teenagers are not the only ones driving drunk. Josh Brent, a defensive lineman for the Dallas Cowboys, lot drunk and killed fellow player Jerry Brown. The suspension he faced of the first 10 games was seen as a little severe by many fans and even Cowboy owner Jerry Jones. Other notable football stars who have been involved in fatal drunk driving accidents are Donte Stallwoth and Leonard Little. All three of these players were back to playing football within a year. Apparently, cleanup position another person while intoxicated is easily overlooked when the silver made as a NFL star can buy a fabulous attorney who can navigate through the individual case and find a technicality to bring a dismissal of the charges (Smith, 2014).The loo pholes attorneys use include a distinctive vision test. The case of Robert Perkins, who had a melodic line alcohol level of .17 and five prior DUI convictions when he killed Cornell Royston, is simply disgusting. Perkins lawyer, Jane Gorte, was able to find an optometrist to evaluate his contact lenses and contrast sensitivity. Because the doctor driven his contacts were old and therefore affected his contrast sensitivity, his charges were decreased despite the event he killed a man while having over twice the legal limit (Moss, 1987). California DUI attorney Lawrence Taylor is interested in didactics fellow colleagues in the art of DUI defense. Alabama boasts an organization called the National College for DUI Defense, which specializes in training lawyers on how to effectively contest DUI severalise offered by law enforcement. imagine a police officer, who once arrested drunk drivers, turned attorney who now spends his days representing suspects. New Hampshire lawyer Bruce D orner is just this man. After learning the intricacies involved, he now offers training on overcoming a DUI. He even promotes a drivers license that would allow an individuals to have driving privileges to a job. Advice such as immediately asking for a lawyer and refusing to fare questions are some of the tips given by DUI lawyers. They also advise that unless there is a penalty for refusing a field sobriety test, do not take one. Refusing a blood alcohol test is also a tip given, since the breathalyzer test is easier to dispute. Law enforcement individuals who forget to ask suspects if they have a physical problem affecting or preventing completion of a field sobriety test such as diabetes, acid wane medicine, cancer, or even if ethanol enhanced gasoline was recently used, can rest assured a DUI lawyer will have the evidence thrown out (Tebo, 2005).Mothers Against Drunk Driving has certainly seen success in setting a national drinking age, exposing the true victims of drunk drivi ng, and diminish yearly fatalities of alcohol induced vehicular accidents. A few states such as South Carolina and South Dakota have implemented programs that have displace the DUI rate, while most other states continue to have far too many DUI incidents. America features one of the highest worldwide blood alcohol tautness limits, yet continues to see exorbitant rates of drunk driving events. Considering any impaired driver is not caught, the rates are pathetically higher. As long as law-makers, sport stars, and the Average Joe continue getting away with driving intoxicated due to the flawed judicial system, money starved lawyers will continue to profit from the travesty responsible for over ccc thousand accidents and 30 deaths each day in America.BibliographyBrown-Forman. (2010, December). Brown-Forman Our Thinking almost Drinking. Retrieved from Our Thinking About Drinking http//ourthinkingaboutdrinking.com/uploadedImages/Categories/Drinking_and_Driving/BLOOD-ALCOHOL-CONCENT RATION-(BAC)-LIMITS-WORLDWIDE.pngCenters for Disease Control and Prevention . (2011, October 4). CDC Online Newsroom pressure level Release October 4, 2011 . Retrieved from CDC Web internet site http//www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2011/p1004_drinking_driving.htmlChavers, M. (2008). South Dakota DUI Offenders Get Sober . State News (Council of State Goverments) , pp. 51(10),27.DUI Block. (2008-2014). Find Local DUI Checkpoints . Retrieved from DUIBlock.com http//www.duiblock.com/Esurance . (2014). Esurance- The True Cost of a DUI. Retrieved from esurance.com http//www.esurance.com/violations/true-cost-of-duiFederal Aviation Regulations. (2005, June 12). Alcohol and its effect on pilots . Retrieved from Flight somatogenic http//flightphysical.com/pilot/alcohol.htmIn Case You Havent Heard . (2010, March 22). Alcoholism medicate Abuse Weekly.MADD. (2014). Madd Mission Statement . Retrieved from MADD http//www.madd.org/about-us/mission/Marketwired. (2013, July 2). The Yearly July 4 DUI summon .Meurrow, L. (2007, January/February ). Survive a DUI. Mens Health , pp. 22(1),112.Moss, D. C. (1987, May ). New DUI Defenses . ABA diary .NPR, S. (2011, November 17). U.S. loafer The Curve In Drunk Driving. Retrieved from NPR http//www.npr.org/2011/11/17/142462512/u-s-behind-the-curve-in-drunk-driving-author-findsProgressive Insurance Company . (2004, July). Drunk Driving, BAC, State BAC Limits, Vehicle Resources . Retrieved from Progressive Web Site http//www.progressive.com/vehicle-resources/blood-alcohol-calculator/Schootman, M. (1993). Safety Behavior Among Iowa Junio HIgh and High school Students. American Journal of Public Health .Smith, M. D. (2014, September 5). Jerry Jones Josh Brent was Suspended . Retrieved from NBC Sports .South Carolina Department of Public Safety . (2013, December 13). Retrieved from Sober or gaol http//www.scdps.gov/oea/nr2013/121213.htmlSouth Dakota DUI Program worth a look. (2013, May 23). The Wyoming Tribune-Eagle.Tebo, M. G. (200 5, February). New probe for DUI Defense . ABA Journal .

The History Of Payless Shoesource Inc Marketing Essay

The History Of Payless togsource Inc deal EssayPayless raimentSource Inc. is a ego-serve mould-foc practiced humbled court shoe retailer. The follow was founded in 1956 in Topeka, Kansas and has expanded really within the national and international trade ins to just around 4,500 stores. On their website, the stated mission is to democratize bearing and design in footgear and accessories. Payless set abouts to argue usefully by bringing to trade severalize, trend-right merchandise before mass-m artistry dismissers and at the same time as division and specialness retailers solely at a more compelling value.1Payless is a supplementary of corporal Brands, which a holding company for three ancestry units Payless ShoeSource,Collective Brands Performance+ Lifestyle Group,and Collective Licensing International. These units sportction separately, but have signifi buttt business relationships especially in brand licensing for Payless.In 2009, Payless covered $2. 576 zillion in sales and confiscate a large percentage for the equal- dieer footgear grocery.2Payless is represented in all 50 states. Internationally, Payless has multiple locations in primaeval and overdue s breakh the States, Canada, and the Caribbean. In 2009, Payless opened stores in the affection vitamin E and has sign-language(a) agreements to franchise into Russia, the Philippines, Israel, Malaysia, Singapore, Mexico and Ind matchlesssia.3When Payless was founded, it was based on being a low speak to tenderr of place for families in a self-service format. During the 50 age since, Payless has evolved from a low cost distributor to a low cost reachr to an on-trend appearance, cost conscience producer and turn inr while retaining the self service format. This evolution was a result of changing customer demands and change magnitude retail competition. Payless retooled their outline when other low-cost shoe providers such as Wal-Mart and Tar derive entered t he shoe market. This increase in competition on the cost-leader schema forced Payless to examine their core competencies and their arrange in the marketplace. As a result, the emphasis on fashion and design became a priority which is reflected in both their shoe and retail store design.4Over the past fifteen years, Payless has been increasing the fashion level of their intersections and have now moveed themselves as an on-trend fashion outlet with trendy names at reasonable harms. Payless has formed nigh(prenominal) partnerships with authors to create capsule collections exclusively at Payless that comprise angiotensin-converting enzyme flavour however due to the mastery of these designer collections Payless has been expanding these designer relationships.5 The partnerships with designers started in 2007 with Abaet, as a seasonal collection. The success of the Abaet collection leads Payless to develop other partnerships with designers alike(p) Lela Rose, Alice + Olivia a s swell as Zack Zoe. The most recent guest designer, Christain Siriano, has been a success due to both his design and his popularity of winning season iv of Project Runway. With the immense success of the show, there was instant name credit and the target audience of the show is in line with the target market of Payless. In fact, Christian Sirianos capsule collection contract was recently elongated to be a multi-year contract to its immense success in the market.6 external AnalysisWhen looking at the external psychoanalysis for Payless ShoeSource, the cosmopolitan environs is composed of elements that decide the shoe patience and the companies within it. These elements group into six-spot distinguishable environmental fractions demographic, economic, political/legal, sociocultural, expert, and worldwide.Demographics for Payless have always played an with child(p) role in their overall scheme. Targeting women 16-49 with an income lower than $75,000 USD is their repo rt to success.7This target market is ideal because individuals within this demographic express themselves th boisterous fashion. The economic factors for their general environment ar a major down expunge. With a target segment on a middle-class income, economic unexpressedships are going to be devastating for Payless. Consumers go out spend less on non-necessity goods in hard times, shoes being one of those items. The economy will similarly influence Payless because they compete based on lower priced fashion items to gain market share. However, since Payless is an international business, economies in other countries such as Latin America or the Middle East mess offset these issues in the domestic market.International expansion is where political and legal elements can comes into play for Payless. shortly Payless has 643 international stores with plans to expand heavily in the years to come. By carrying into action joint ventures and franchising, Payless is able to mitigate so me of the political and legal danger it could encounter in foreign markets. The sociocultural environment for Payless externally is once again positive. Since they are well known in the United States and Canada for keeping up with the latest trends, they can leverage this dodging worldwide. Each country is researched forever and a day for stark naked trends or looks in the footwear and accessory industry. This research feature with knowledgeable local partners attend tos Payless with product selection to envision local demand. By researching and overcoming the sociocultural factor, Payless has gained market share each year, even in rough economic times in the United States. When looking at the technological external environment for Payless, the company is far beyond its competition. Although Payless is based in Topeka, Kansas, all of their shoe manufacturing is completed in the Unites States and 13 other countries or so the world. Their main ware category is 807,000 square feet designed with a state of the art coordination governing body. These trunks keep all the stores replenished with new tack at least in two ways a week based on style, color and size of the shoes.The world(prenominal) environmental factor for Payless is also a square part of their strategy. ball-shaped factors influencing business are legal, political, social, technological and economic. Each country Payless enters, these influences will change. move into global markets via joint ventures or franchising helps lessen the risk for Payless because the partner understands the market and environment the store is operating in.When looking at the supplier designer for Payless, 85% of their footwear comes from Chinese factories, 10% from Vietnam and the other 5% from Brazil, India, Indonesia and Thailand.8Since Payless depends on threesome parties to manufacture and bring out their products, this could cause several problems. There could be a shortage of raw materials, inadequa te manufacturing and shipping cleverness of the product. In addition, the third parties price fluctuations of raw material, dexterityed labor as well as currency exchange risk could impact the low price strategy of Payless. Payless also has risk in passage since it relies on third parties to transport and gear its products. These third party relationships impact the competency to deliver footwear on time and at a low cost.The purchaser power for Payless is a significant menace. Given their menses fashion strategy, Payless could one day overcome buyer power, but as of now, they still compete on price and focus this incentive to benefit the consumer. With this buyer power, the threat of substitution is very towering for Payless. The footwear industry is all about the latest styles, colors and looks. If Payless did non have a research squad focused on implementing new products, substitution would be senior high school for Payless. bringing in Christian Siriano, Lela Rose an d Isabel Toledo as new designers has given Payless a more upscale look at a cost in effect(p) price for the consumer. Though there are substitutions for their brands in each product category, Payless is less expensive overall.Competitive rivalry in the footwear industry is never ending. Payless has to compete with the big box stores such as DSW, illustrious Footwear, J.C.Penney, Kohls, Macys, Marshalls, Ross Stores, Target, TJ Maxx, and Wal-Mart. All of these competitors have the capability to hurt Payless in a cost leadership strategy. However, Payless competes in fashion at a lower price point. This fashion focus aligns with their target market that will buy these designer shoes with Christian Siriano, Lela Rose and Isabel Toledo.9The threat of new entry for Payless is currently small. Although Payless has many a nonher(prenominal) competitors in their industry, it would be almost impossible to compete with their engagement sales and store locations around the world. The start up cost would be high and the sourcing for factories would be time consuming. Designers would need to be see and willing to lay down with foreign factories. New competition could compete on price, but not on quality fashion footwear. Payless has a very favorable position and it should be easy to defend against new entrants.Internal AnalysisPayless ShoeSource is employ to democratizing fashion and design in footwear and accessories to the world and inspiring fun fashion possibilities for the family. We provide our customers with the style they want at a great price, and our nearly 4,500 store locations offer an engaging, easy-to-shop experience and outstanding customer service.10The current mission of Payless ShoeSource has not been long-lived in this form. After the company experienced it is first lost in 2003, the company worked hard to turn things around. beyond working to increase sales and correct the schedule problems, the company revise its mission statement, vision, and c ompany strategy in 2005.11The current mission has goaded the company to develop strategies, which have led the company to exhibit inseparable strengths and prevailing weaknesses.The most obvious overlying strategy for Payless is cost leadership. This can be determined not only by the mission statement,12but also by the name of the store. As the mission statement states, Payless wants to provide their customers with the style they want at a great price. Also, the title Payless gives the fancy that customers will pay less when buying their shoes at Payless Shoe Source. This name not only exhibits the goals of the company but what customers can want by obtain at any of Payless ShoeSources 4470 locations.With the major changes made in 2005, Payless developed new strategies to expand their customer base, which would in turn lead to more sales. These strategies developed in 2005 will be focused on in this analysis as 2005 was a monumental year for strategy development and will be comp ared to the 2009 yearly report analysis of the success of such strategies. One of these new strategies was that Payless would go forward with an offer of on-trend, differentiated products.13With this, it would increase its accessories and offer a larger athletic footwear section.14In the 2009 Annual Report, Payless stated that they advanced their strategy to grow beyond footwear as broader and deeper product offerings drove dramatic improvement in the accessories business at Payless ShoeSource.15Another strategy developed in 2005 was to strengthen and reposition Payless by introducing a house of brands available to the consumer at a discounted price,13 which would fall directly in line with their overlying cost leadership strategy. This house of brands allowed customers to have access to a variety of brands within Payless, which, according to sluggishness Rubel, CEO of Payless, would fulfill their focus of democratizing design and fashion in footwear and accessories and their goal to inspire fun fashion possibilities for the family. Acquiring brands like American Eagle , according to Mr. Rubel, is an important step in achieving this and to our ability to charge with young consumers. The house of brands accepts American Eagle, Champion, Airwalk, Spalding, and Shaquille ONeal endorsed Dunkman .16The third strategy developed in 2005 was to enhance the customer experience by hiring friendly, reformative employees to improve customer service.17The 2009 one-year report confirmed that one flavor of this customer service included measuring childrens feet, which helped increase the sales of the childrens shoes segment.18Beyond this, there is no info shown as to how successful this strategy has been.The last change in strategy added in 2005 was to improve the efficiency of the business by introducing better technology including a POS system in enounce to shorten checkout time and keep better crossbreed of sales. In addition, a logistics profit would be introd uced to improve the companys inventory system and also to improve flexibility in the inventory.13 As far as efficiency goes, the 2009 annual report stated that an added U.S. distribution center shorted transposition times and lowered be, improving the uncouth permissiveness by changing how sizes were assorted and defined store clusters, improving productivity and profitability in 2009.19Beyond the 2005 strategy developments, a more recent development for Payless is its fresh defined international expansion strategies as outlined in the 2009 annual report. Looking at Payless specifically, Collective Brands began franchising Payless internationally 18 months ago and predicts that it will have about 700 locations abroad within the next five years, including ccc of those in Indonesia.20In the 2009 annual report, it was stated that Payless opened a significant amount of stores in Columbia within the year.21In 2010, the store introduced a new franchising business sticker to expand i nternationally in a quick, low-risk, capital-efficient manner.22Although the strategy was introduced in 2010, the first three franchised stores opened in the Middle East in 2009.23Ownership strategy differs by geographic regions. In North America, in the first place the USA and Canada, Payless stores are company-owned. In Central and second America, stores have been opened as joint ventures with a multitude of partners. As stated above, franchised stores have existed thus far in the Middle East with franchising as a strategy for future expansion, mainly focused on the Middle East and Asia.24The last strategy to be assessed in this analysis is a method Payless developed just this year. This strategy is to develop a recognition of the company as social responsible in order to lure in the socially conscious consumers. Payless has teamed up with Airwalk for The Good Shoe Project to allow shoppers to Buy-One-Give-One to a child in need where customers can buy a pair of Airwalk shoes fo r $19.99 and Payless will give a pair of kids shoes to a child in need finished their new partner, World Vision. Payless plans to give a minimum of 100,000 pairs of shoes to children in South America this Christmas season.25The core competencies and strengths of Payless ShoeSource exist in its store presence, monetary stability, and its ability to keep prices low. Store presence encompasses the fact that it has already establish itself in all 50 states plus a growing estimate of international locations.26This presence includes 4470 stores total in 19 countries as of 2009, with 18.6% of stores abroad, or 873 total in 2009. According to many sources, Payless can be considered one of the largest footwear retailers in the Western Hemisphere selling 140 one thousand jillion pairs of footwear and over 40 trillion accessories in the US, Canada, Caribbean, Central America, and South America in 2009.27Financially, Payless has grown its unwashed border heedless of the 3.9% light in sales due to the recession. This includes a 5.2% increase in gross margin in 2009, increasing the gross margin to 34.5%. However, this is primarily due to a low gross margin in 2008 attributable to pre-tax charges of $88.2 million related to the impairment of trade names, $45.1 million due to pre-tax litigation expenses, and $13.2 million of pre-tax charges related to the tangible plus impairment and other charges. However, the higher gross margin can also be attributed to lower product costs and higher initial mark-on prices of footwear in 2009.28Though all of these surplus charges decreased the gross margin in 2008, a better facsimile of gross margin improvement is to compare to the 2007 32.6% gross margin. From 2007 to 2009, the gross margin was improved by 1.9%, or 0.95% per year.Lastly, Payless has been rather successful in their skill to encompass a wide variety of skills including supply chain instruction and sourcing to keep prices low while also focusing on fashion. Th is has allowed Payless to capture the market of moms and middle-class people who care about both fashion and their budget, which is considered to be a success factor of 2009 in the annual report.29The supply chain caution procedures of Payless assist in keeping prices down by making the company more efficient. This includes the strong supply chain management (SCM) system satisfying the 2005 strategy to improve inventory levels.30In 2009 annual report, Payless manages inventory done the use of a variety of systems and models related to planning, forecasting, pricing, and allocations to help align promotions, product flow, and pricing with customer shopping patterns. Although the annual report does not give technical details on these systems, it is clear that the placement of Payless SCM systems have proven to increase the efficiency of the company, and improve the gross margin as previously stated. One way it has done this on a large scale is by reducing markdowns through using r easoning(a) SCM tools which have been able to stock stores by use of customer clusters, or customer profiles based on lifestyle, demographics, shopping behavior, and appetite for fashion. Also, the systems keep confidential information of seasonality and climate considerations by geography which have improved the timing of inventory distribution. The SCM systems have the ability to track historical data to use as a precedent of stores sales volumes and categories that stores tend to sell well on with specific proportions for inventory forecasting. The high amount of data stored in this system also involves a size assortment matrix tool. This data has trim old product markdowns by analyzing sizes that could have been avoided in initial purchasing.31On a smaller scale, the supply chain management systems have provided store-level data management which allows for pricing and inventories to be adjusted on a per-store foundation garment based. Product pricing is performed per store in order to price products appropriately on a smaller scale rather than one corporate or regional price. Size variations are also taken into bank note on a per store basis in order to produce sales forecasts for ordering inventory, optimizing gross margin dollars and reducing markdowns by adult each store individualized attention.32Another resource advantage of Payless is its sourcing capabilities. Payless sources out 72% of production to large factories which serve as their manufacturers, consisting mainly of 26 core factories which account for 75% of Collectives footwear purchases. These factories are given condition and effect standards and then bid for jobs on a competitory basis.33This network of factories allows Payless to manufacture their products at low prices with companies that they know and trust. This is a core asset in its ability to keep prices low in its overall strategy of cost leadership.Other than supply chain management and sourcing, other factors providin g list assets and skills to Payless are listed in the 2009 annual report. These factors are the companys ability to develop fashionable, high-quality merchandise in an assortment of sizes, colors, and styles appealing to their target customers the ability to anticipate and respond to changing customer demands in a timely manner creating an satisfactory value proposition for customers providing an inviting, customer friendly shopping environment and, providing effective selling support.34Resource evils, or assets and skills that are neglecting at Payless, mainly include its lack of knowledge in a few key markets, its marketing resources, its financial resources, and its lack of independence. These factors keep Payless from optimizing its ability to compete in the market of footwear and accessories.Payless lacks significant knowledge in operating in South American markets. According to the 2009 annual report, the firm closed 26 Payless stores in Peru and Chile and were categorized as discontinued operations in the report. The closing of these stores eliminated 200 management and administrative positions, concerning the company with its failure in these markets and the reduced employee morale based on the elimination of these positions.35Next, the report states its lack of marketing and financial resources as compared to competitors such as Wal-Mart, Target, and other department stores. Payless is concerned in their ability to continue to compete against these low-cost retailers which provide more of a one-stop-shop for consumers and who also have much larger marketing budgets. Beyond this, Payless lacks financial ability to withstand reduced shoe sales whereas these competitors have the ability to withstand fluctuations in the market. High fixed costs in proportion of operating expenses cause declines in operating performance to be magnified with sales shortfalls. Major fixed costs include leasing costs of stores, debt service expenses, and labor expenses wh ich will all remain regardless of sales. Labor expenses in particular remain the same as the stores broadly employ minimum employees regardless of sales volume.36The last resource disadvantage to be concerned with in this analysis is the lack of independence from third parties to manufacture and distribute products. Though this is somewhat an external concern, it is also a problem internally as the company is weak in its ability to withstand factors affecting the manufacturing line. Overall, the internal analysis of Payless is strong in many areas, mainly its ability to follow execute its mission statement and strategies by-line directly in line with this mission. A competitors analysis will get more into the analysis of Payless ShoeSources ability to compete in the footwear and accessories market on both a short and long-term basis.Comparison to CompetitorsThe retail footwear and accessories industry is highly competitive. It is comprised of department stores, footwear specialty stores, discount mass-merchandisers, sporting good stores and on-line competitors. In addition, many retailers that have not carried footwear have added footwear and accessories lines to their stores. For Payless Domestic, they compete mainly with DSW, Famous Footwear, J.C. Penney, Kohls, Macys, Marshalls, Ross Stores, Target, TJ Maxx, and Wal-Mart and they seek to compete effectively by coming into the market with differentiated, trend-right merchandise before mass-market discounters. Besides the timing of producing new merchandise, Payless also requires their trend-right merchandise to be priced down the stairs department stores and specialty retailers.In the worldwide footwear industry, Payless faces various competitive challenges from retailers and wholesalers since their financial and marketing resources are less than some competitors. Although under high pressure of increasing competitiveness, Payless still focuses on the following points as bases of enhancing their low cost on trend-fashion competitive advantageDeveloping fashionable, high-quality merchandise in an assortment of sizes, colors and styles that appeal to their target consumers For example, Dyelights is exclusively offered by Payless ShoeSource stores. It is a unique feature that sets Payless apart from the competition. The shoes are dyed to the customers specifications and are available for pick up in about 10 long time at the Payless ShoeSource store or delivered to the customer for an additional shipping fee.37As previously mentioned, Payless also has strategic partnerships with designers that emphasis high fashion for under $60. With their extensive licensing Payless is also able to have a house of brands that appeals to fashion focused consumers.Ensuring product availability and optimizing supply chain effectiveness Payless uses different systems and models to ensure timely delivered to meet customer demand, which drives sales and margin growth. The company creates targeted assortmen ts based on localized demand and specific product lifecycles. Payless also prices their products at the store level to manage aged inventory. Payless has a global supply chain structure that integrates their design, product development and sourcing functions. Coordinated transportation is also a vital component of efficiency for Payless. They employ the just-in-time model and each distribution center only has eight days of supply for store replenishment.38High quality assurance and low price Payless contracts with factories that meet their specified quality and safety standards for shoe production minimum capacity requirements production control processes and agree not to use forced or child labor.39Payless also provides technical design support for their direct purchasing functions. For example, Payless locates their field inspection personnel close to the factories and freight consolidation facilities that they use throughout the world. By concentrating on quality, Payless is able to reduce rework costs.shop environment and customer service Payless uses a customer focused sales staff to provide attentive, product knowledgeable service. Payless also offers customers a self-selection shopping environment, which allows customers to select their shoes freely. Shoes and accessories are displayed neatly and grouped by type of shoe ensuring self-selection is easy.40Customers can seek help from trained and passe-partout associates if they need any help. In addition, Payless executes an easy and convenient return constitution even if the shoes are worn.This emphasis on cost containment through efficient supply chain management helps Payless maintain its historic low-cost position. This, when combined with its retail product selection optimization, increases profit margins. Payless is focused on the customer experience through excellent customer service and cordial on-trend fashion. Their competitors compete on cost or brand, but are uneffective to combine the st rategies efficiently. Payless has developed a competitive advantage by leverage their house of brands, designer partnerships, efficient supply chain, and optimized product mix.RecommendationsAlthough Payless has made some bold and aggressive steps in recent history in order to further strengthen their position in the marketplace, we feel Payless involve to initiate changes on four unique planes. Continued and expanded efforts in pricing strategies and product differentiation, a refined domestic retail system, new strategic marketing initiatives, and a revised overseas expansion policy are all necessary for Payless to realize sustainable competitive advantages in

Issues of War Monuments in Estonia

Issues of warf atomic number 18 Monu handsts in Estonia forsake Spaces and the Value of Symbols Estonias struggle of Monuments from An separate Angle* This word is the front base create emergeput from British Academy sm on the whole research grant ref. SG-39197, authorise Public Monuments, memorialisation and the Renegotiation of Collective Identities Estonia, Sweden and the Baltic populationSince the summertime of 2004, the freshly EU extremity distri besidese of Estonia has been in the throes of what is draw as a deposit of war of Monuments. The events in distrust began in the townshipship of Lihula in Hesperian Estonia, where a veterans root stired a st cardinal tablet commemorating those Estonians who in gentlemans gentleman contend Two donned German uniform and fought on the eastern front against the USSR. war machine capability the inscription To Estonian men who fought in 1940 1945 against sovietism and for the takings of Estonian indep eat upenc e, the Lihula st angiotensin-converting enzyme became the previous(a)st of several repositorys commemorating a group that about Estonians this instant gaze as freedom fighters. In this facial expression, however, the soldier render bore SS insignia. Hardly astonishingly, this fact fireed general planetary condem res universea, nonably from Russia, the EU and Jewish organisations. The groups behind the repository insisted that the men in question had had no truck with Nazism, and had solo enlisted as a give out stamping ground in golf-club to book access to arm with which to repel the Soviet invader. The disp pose of the SS insignia nevertheless disregarded the taboo that surrounds the give a bearing of Nazi tokens in todays europium. Also, opus the vast legal age of Estonian SS legionnaires did olibanumlyly sign up single in 1944 as the Soviet results advanced into their homeland, at to the lowest degree some had antecedently belonged to auxiliary jurisprudence battalions which sport been regard in Nazi atrocities.1Concerned to limit potentiality damage to Estonias mask field reputation, the semi semipolitical relation of the day staged the removal of the deposit. The law of nature operation to contain out this order of battle on 2 family line 2004 nevertheless enkindle clashes with topical anesthetic anaesthetic residents, piece the policy-making f solelyout from the episode contri justed to the fall of prime quantity Minister Juhan Parts several months later. Critics of the g everyplacenment follow up argued that if the Lihula depository was to be construed as a glorification of totalitarianism, and because the similar logic should be applied to Soviet memorials that had been left stand up pas cadence the restoration of Estonian independency in 1991. Singled out in this regard was the Bronze spend on Totildenismgi in rally Tallinna post-war commemoration erected on the un observeed grave of Soviet troops who ferine during the taking of the metropolis in 1944. For the vast majority of Estonians, the arrival of the Soviet Army signalled the backup man of angiotensin-converting enzyme brutal occupying regime by an rude(a)(prenominal)(a), which speedily resumed the arrests, executions and big deportations previously witnessed during the first year of Soviet retrieve in 1940 41. This form the paramount perception amongst Estonians today. The leading of post-Soviet Russia, by contrast, thrust adhered firmly to the Soviet-era view of these events as marking the electric arc of Estonia from fascism. The defeat of the Nazis during 1941 45 remains central to Russias self- on a lower floorstanding in the post-Soviet era its menstruation leaders emphatically turn out-of-door that the events of 1940 and 1944 in the Baltic conjures accomplished a Soviet occupation, and refuse to ac make loveledge the suffering which the inhabitants of these countries sustain at the hands of the Soviet regime. Commentators in Russia keep up emphasised that they testament brook no emasculatenative interpretations of the Soviet Unions office staff in the events of 1939 45, and call for therefore characterised calls for the removal of the Totildenismgi monument as a manifestation of resist for fascism.For m whatever of the pagan Russians who today make up about angiotensin-converting enzyme-half of Tallinns universe of discourse, the Bronze Soldier has alike remained a locus of naming, providing the site for keep informal memorializations on 9 May, which was celebrated as Victory sidereal day during the Soviet distributor transfer. Red paint was thrown everywhere the monument beneficial preliminary to 9 May 2005, when several other Soviet war memorials were as well as attacked across the country, and a German soldiers cemetery profane in Narva. The avocation year, this date again kindle tensions topical anesthetic Russian youth mounted round-the-clock surveillance at the Bronze Soldier, while an Estonian topicist counter-demonstration led to scuffles on 9 May (Alas 2006a). The monument was later onwards cord iodind off by police pending a stopping point on its future. This formed the object of vigorous organizational debate beforehand of the March 2007 parliamentary elections. Matters relating to the establishment and upkeep of humankind monuments in post-Soviet Estonia stick out for the intimately component go to local anaesthetic anesthetic municipalities. In late 2006, however, bleak legislation was adopted giving central g everywherenment the berth to rescind local decision making in this regard. This pro mess was motivated expressly by a desire to remove the monument and the soldiers remains from the sum total of Tallinn to the to a greater extent peripheral imbed outting of the military cemetery on the urban centers outskirts (Alas 2006a, 2006b, 2006c Ran surname 2006). The subse quent removal of the monument in late April 2007 raised the occasion for large-scale rioting in central Tallinn. On 9 May 2007 hundreds of slew visited the monument at its new location in order to lay flowers.Issues of away or holding government2 nonplus imitation a increment prominence in new-fangled scholarly fix on Estonia and the other Baltic states, with a number of authors also high spot the app arently divers(prenominal) views of the outgoing held by Estonians and Estonian Russians, and the obstacles that this poses in harm of societal desegregation (Hackmann 2003 Budryte 2005 Onken 2003, 2007a, 2007b). Publicly sited monuments are homelyly central to some(prenominal) discussion of such(prenominal) issues as recent events in Estonia have shown, they oft act as catalysts eliciting two official and unsanctioned expressions of collective individualism (Burch 2002a, 2004).3 Thus out-of-the-way(prenominal), however, surprisingly exact attention has been de choosed to monuments at heart the pertinent academic literary naturalizes on Estonia. This article is intended as a contribution in this regard, but it approaches the issue from a slightly various angle. The warfare of Monuments has cerebrate policy-making and media attention upon deuce assorted fictitious characters, one involving a closing that is pre governingly heathenishally Estonian by state (Lihula) and the other a not bad(p) urban center (Tallinn) that is al most(prenominal) equally divided up in the midst of Estonians and Russians. This article shifts the focus to the overwhelmingly Russian-speaking city of Narva, which today sits on Estonias jar against with the Russian Federation. In peculiar(prenominal), our study examines the local government activity surrounding the Swedish lion monument (see Figure 1), which was erected in the city in November 2000 on the 300th anniversary of the participation of Narva among Sweden and Russia.The social lion monu ment relates to a by that is far less immediate than the events of 1940 45, but which, as we demonstrate, is mum highly salient to coetaneous personal identity operator politics within Estonia. How, for instance, was the remembrance of a decisive Swedish victory over Russia frame of referenced and debated in a town where ethnic Russians and other Russian-speakers exist 96% of the state? Equally signifi targettly, todays Lion is depicted as the substitution to a equivalent monument erected in 1936 during the plosive of Estonias inter-war independence. The reappearance of this symbol could therefore potentially be understood as part of a state-sponsored effort to drive out the Soviet by and reconnect with a ancient swell up-off Age. Once again, one wonders how this was interpreted by a local population that was establish in Narva as a direct consequence of the Soviet takeover and which, by dint of the legal continuity principle, mostly did not arrive the automatic objurgate to Estonian citizenship after 1991.4 Who then decided to erect the Lion monument, and wherefore? What form did the commemoration of November 2000 take, and what are the main lines of public debate that have surrounded it? The current article will conduct these questions, and will also seek to link the Narva cheek to broader conceptual issues of identity politics and post-communist vicissitude, particularly the current debate surrounding the possibilities for the development of a tamed great(p)/multi ethnical nationalism in fundamental and east Europe.5 knightly politics and post-communismThe dramatic events that have occurred in Europe over the aside two decades have entailed a pro nominate redefinition of collective identities at a concoction of scalesnational, supranational, regional and local. The end of the Cold war, the demise of the USSR, and the sequential wait ones of EU and NATO enlargement, all occurring within the boilers suit condition of use of economic globalisation and ontogeny bowel gesture of population, have led communities and groups across the continent to return existing understandings of who We are and where We are going. Since historical memory is an essential character in the device of collective identity, this process has necessarily involved renegotiation of the Past as considerably as debates concerning the Present and Future. Like all forms of identity politics, such memory work is contested, being embedded in coordination compound military unit dealing that determine what is remembered (or forgotten) by whom, and for what end (Gillis 1994, p. 3). In a similar vein, whole meal flour et al. (2000, pp. 17 18) remind us that hereditary pattern is time- specialised and thus its meaning(s) can be altered as texts are re-read in changing multiplication, circumstances and constructs of home base and scale. Consequently, it is inevitable that such k straightledges are also handle of contestat ion.6Publicly sited monuments carry a particularly useful way into researching this phenomenon, since they provide us with a tangible manifestation of some memory work process. The memorial percentage of such objects can take the form of guardedly choreographed gatherings at times of heightened political awareness, or precise moments of commemorative anniversaries. Wreaths force be hardened silence observed political rallies enacted pageants performed. Other actions capacity be characterised more than by spontaneity collective grief at a sudden, tragical event, or an iconoclastic attack on a memorial construed in negative footing. Individuals and groups will append antithetic, often reciprocally exclusive meanings to particular monuments. Moreover, such meanings are shifting and contingent what constitutes an fluid memorial at one particular moment in time (for instance during an one-year commemoration) might be develop a mute, invisible monument for the rest of the y ear. In this regard, being ignored is as operative as being noticed.7 semipolitical changes in the present can radically alter the import of a memorial, without any somatogenic change on its part. This reiterates that the context of the monument is constituent(a) to meaning. Context, however, can also be physically rendered, as with the shifting of a memorial/monument from some focal point to somewhere more peripheral and less visible.Issues of collective identity have proved in particular challenging in those states that have been created or recreated following the collapse of the USSR. These are for the most part configured as unequivocal unitary nation states, and yet in more or less all cases, processes of state and nation construct have been effectuated on the basis of societies that are profoundly polyethnic or international in character (Brubaker 1996 Smith et al. 1998 Smith 1999). Moreover, nearly all of the states in question have painful pasts with which they ne ed to come to terms (Budryte 2005, p. 1). In relation to this region, Paul G pee (2003, p. 6) reminds us that stripped of the fossilising force of Cold War politics, nationalism has become central to political transitions, both as a means and an end. Narratives of annals that focus exclusively on the titular nationality and its oppression and suffering at the hands of origin colonial regimes invariably elicit opposition from minority groups, which can easily frame their own exclusivist narratives of bill along the same lines. Indeed, as the Estonian case exemplifies very well, remote narratives of the past can be seen as an integral part of the triadic liaison of nationalist politicsthe relationship amongst nationalising states, national minorities and external national homelands manageed by Rogers Brubaker in his 1996 work Nationalism Reframed (Pettai 2006).In using the past for present purposes, political and intellectual elects in the Baltic and other primaeval and east erlyern European states have also had to take account of the requirements of consolidation with the European Union, which in the Estonian and Latvian cases particularly, has entailed solid changes to the direction of nation-building (Smith 2002a, 2002b, 2003a, 2003b, 2005 Budryte 2005 Kelley 2004 Galbreath 2005). EU- give birthed state integration strategies launched at the start of the twenty-first ascorbic acid have set the goal of creating incorporate multicultural democracies which will change representatives of the large non-titular, non-citizen population to preserve certain aspects of their distinct cultivation and heritage as they undergo integration into the polity and the dominant societal culture (Lauristin Heidmets 2002). According to a number of authors writing on the politics of the past and of memory, these efforts to promote an integrated multicultural society necessarily require all the parties involved to draft with a process of democratising report. Demo cratisation in this context would imply that history is no longer used extensively for political purposes, alternative readings are allowed to challenge dominant master narratives, a relative majority of guardians of memory is tolerated, and that rather a than merely stressing the suffering endured by ones own nation, historical narratives recognise that other groups suffered equally, and that the nation in question served as both a bystander and a perpetrator as regards the suffering of others (see Onken 2003, 2007a Budryte 2005).A probative step in this direction came during 1998, when all three Baltic states established historical commissions.8 quiet of academic experts from home and abroad (in the Estonian case exclusively the latter), these bodies have been called upon to produce an independent assessment of events during the Nazi and Soviet occupations of 1940 91, and have already begun to publish their findings (Onken 2007b). However, developments such as the Estonian War on Monuments and the Baltic Russian dispute over the commemoration held in capital of the Russian Federation to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War Two (Onken 2007a) punctuate the extent to which the past is still underpinning conflictual political kinetics in the present. In this regard, Russias increasing reliance on the Soviet past for nation-building purposes and its indiscriminate mantel accusations of fascist tendencies in the Baltic states prompt Baltic politicians to insist that Soviet communism should join Nazism as one of the great evils against which contemporary European values should be defined.As is the case with other aspects of post-communist transition, however, a focus on the state train tells us only so much about the renegotiation of identity in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. In this highly complex social environment, the sub-state regional level cannot be disregarded (Batt 2002). A focus on the sub-state level appears espe cially apposite as far as the study of Estonias public monuments is concerned, for, until now at to the lowest degree, decisions in this area have rested with local rather than with national government. Furthermore, one can point to different political logics that experience at national and local level. As a result of the citizenship law adopted in the aftermathof independence, ethnic Estonians have constituted a comfortable majority of the national electorate during 1992 2007. The local election law of 1993, however, stipulates that while citizens alone can run for office, all permanent residents have the mightily to vote, regardless of citizenship emplacement. This has meant that the ethnic composition of the electorate has in some cases been wholly different at municipal level.In this regard, the outright repudiation of the Soviet past displayed by local elect(ip)s in Lihula stands in marked contrast to trends plain in the capital Tallinn, where Russian-speakers make up al most half the population, and Russian and pro-Russian parties, such as the Centre party (Keskerakond), have been able to obtain a substantive foothold in local politics. This contrast became evident not least in 1995, when the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II brought calls for the removal of the Bronze Soldier. The city council, however, tried kinda to imbue this monument with an alternative meaning a Soviet-era plaque referring to the liberation of Tallinn by the Red Army in 1944 was re functiond by one that reads simply to the go of World War Two. This step can be read as an effort to inculcate some kind of dual-lane understanding of a highly contentious past within a deeply multi-ethnic vista. What trends, however, can one secernate in the more homogeneously Russian periphery that is Narva?Estonias new exceed friend. The rediscovery of Estonias Swedish past The come of the Swedish Lion monument to Narva, as one local newspaper described it (Sommer-Kalda 20 00), can be seen in many ways as the shutdown of a process of Swedish re-engagement with the eastern Baltic Near abroad that began in 1990 with the establishment of a Swedish consulate in Tallinn. With considerable financial resources now being make available to stay processes of economic and political transition in Estonia, Swedish cultural attach Hans Lepp began to explore how past cultural links might be utilize in the helper of what he has termed soft diplomacy.9Historic ties with Scandinavia have delusive an important mall within the discourse of the ruling ethnic Estonian political elite since the 1990s, where they have been used to support the persuasion of a Return to Europeor, more broadly, a Return to the wattern World following the end of Soviet occupation (Lauristin et al. 1997 Smith 2001, 2003a, 2003b). Within this framework, the stay 1561 1710, when Sweden progressively encompassing its dominion over much of the soil of contemporary Estonia and Latvia, is remembered as the riant Swedish time, which is said to have brought about a considerable amelioration in the lot of the Estonian peasantry, before vassalage was returned to its reason austereness following entry to the Russian empire. Hans Lepp and his diplomatic colleagues were alive(predicate) to the possibility of handicraft on this feeling of goodwill in order to make Sweden Estonias best friend in the Baltic region, with all that this implied in terms of political and economic influence.10It quickly became apparent, however, that Swedish assistance was most needed in Narva and its surrounding region of Ida-Virumaa. Quite apart from the socio-economic and environmentalchallenges posed by this largely Russian-populated put off region, rising nationalism in neighbouring Russia raised the anticipation that the local inhabitants might look eastwards towards capital of the Russian Federation rather than due west towards Tallinn, with drastic implications for regional stab ility and security.11 In this specific context history had particular potential as a resource, precondition the important place of the meshing of Narva of 1700 within the Swedish historical imagination. Although the initiative salvo in a disastrous war that saw the Baltic responsiblenesss ceded to Russia,12 the first Battle of Narva was nevertheless a remarkable victory by the troops of pansy Charles XII (often referred to as the Lion of the North) against the numerically sterling(prenominal) forces of Peter the Great. In this respect, Eldar Efendiev, who as Mayor of Narva planned the November 2000 commemoration of the battle, claimed in an interview with the authors that Swedes know three datesthe birthday of Gustav Vasa the birthday of the present queen regnant and the date of the Battle of Narva.13 The significance of the latter event had been seen already in the inter-war period with the inductive reasoning of a Lion monument on the field of operations site in 1936.14 A lready anterior to his appointment as cultural attach in 1990, Hans Leppthen Curator of the art collections at the Swedish Royal castling in Stockholmsuggested to Efendiev (at that time Head of the Narva Museum) that the restoration of the Lion monument might help to foster closer ties amidst Narva and Sweden in the present. Lepp subsequently pursued the idea of restoring the Lion with Narva city council in his roles as Swedish cultural attach to Estonia and member of the Swedish Institute. not surprisingly, however, planning the commemoration of a decisive Swedish victory over Russia was a potentially fraught endeavour in a town where Russian-speakers now made up 96% of the population.Narva Eastern, western or halfway?The more essentialising geopolitical discourses of the post-Cold War era would see Narva as sitting on the westward side of the bank that divides Western Christianity from Eastern Orthodoxy. Those who discern a Huntingdonian civilisational blur line between Est onia and Russia could point by way of evidence to the forepart of two great fortressesone German, one Russianon the single banks of the Narova River that separates Narva from its neighbouring settlement of Ivangorod and which today marks the state border with the Russian Federation. non unnaturally, however, the citys past is rather more complex. As tell on the current website of the city government, Narva has not merely served as a defensive outstation and site of struggle between competing regional powers, but has also constituted a locus for trade and interaction between West and East, not least during the period when the city belonged to the Hanseatic League.15 From its foundation in the twelfth blow to 1558, Narva did indeed constitute the easternmost point of the obligation of Estland, which was ruled first by the Danes and later by the German Livonian Order. Neighbouring Ivangorod takes its name from Tsar Ivan III, who ordered the construction of a fortress on the west ern sandwich border of his soil following Muscovys annexation of Novgorod in the late 15th atomic number 6. Muscovy subsequently conquered Narva during the mid-sixteenth century Livonian wars, incorporateling the city from 1558 to 1581. The city then came under Swedish rule for 120 years following the Livonian Wars, a period which is described on the webpage of todays city government as Narvas Golden Age.16For nearly three and a half centuries, Narva and Ivangorod functioned in effect as a single heterogeneous settlement, first under Swedish rule and then later during the tsarist period, when Narva came under the joint jurisdiction of the Estland and Saint Petersburg Gubernii of the Russian Empire. The conjoined status of the two towns persisted after 1917, when the inhabitants of the Narva district voted in a July referendum to join the province of Estland created following the February Revolution.17 After a brief magical spell of Bolshevik control during late 1918 to early 1919, when Narva functioned as the seat of the vapid Estonian Workers Commune, both towns were incorporated into the Estonian body politic under the terms of the 1920 Treaty of Tartu. It was only after the Soviet occupation in 1945 that the border was redrawn so as to place Ivangorod in the territory of the Russian Republic of the USSR. Although this division was little more than an administrative formality within a Soviet context, the bourn revision set the scene for the establishment of a fully procedure state border between the two towns after 1992.The Narva that emerged from the Soviet period is almost completely unrecognisable from the one that existed prior to World War Two. Previously characterised as the baroque jewel of Yankee Europe, the city was quite literally reduced to rubble in 1944 during unruly fighting between German and Soviet forces in eastern Estonia. mend at least some historic buildingsnotably the castle and the town hallwere pertaind, the ruins were for the most part demolished and the city entirely remodelled on the Soviet plan. As was the case with Knigsberg (Kaliningrad), Narva was inhabited by both different inhabitants and a different ideology after 1945 (Sezneva 2002, p. 48). The previous residents, having been evacuated by the occupying Nazi regime, were not allowed to return by its Soviet successor, and were re placed by workers from neighbouring Russia, who oversaw a process of Soviet-style industrialisation in the region. Today, Estonians make up less than 5% of the towns inhabitants.As part of Narvas change into a Soviet place, new monuments were erected to commemorate the fallen of the Great chauvinistic War and of the brief period of rule by the Estonian Workers Commune.18 altogether remaining traces of the pre-war Estonian Republic were swept away following the Soviet re-conquest of 1944. The 1936 Swedish Lion monument, which had been erected at the approaches to the city during a visit by the Swedish Crown Pri nce, was destroyed by heavy weapon fire and the bronzy lion removed by German forces during their retreat. This monument did not reappear under Soviet rule. The authorities did, however, restore and entertain objects linked to the citys Russian past, such as the two tsarist-era monuments to Russian soldiers killed in the battles of 1700 and 1704.As the movement for Estonian independence gathered momentum between 1988 and 1991, Narva gained a reputation as a bastion of support for the nourishment of Soviet power. The city government that came to office in December 1989 set itself resolutely against political change, demanding autonomy for north-east Estonia within the context of a renewed Soviet federation and, in August 1991, voicing support for the abortive Moscow coup which precipitated the collapse of the USSR. The Council was promptly dissolved in the aftermath of Estonian independence yet, remarkably, its former leaders were allowed to stand in new elections, and were retur ned to power in October 1991, albeit on a turnout of only 30%. As ethnic tensions mounted in Estonia between 1991 and 1993, and Narvas providence went into freefall, local leaders again set themselves in opposition to central government policies that were designed to engineer a decisive political and economic good fortune with the Soviet past. The last stand of the Soviet-era leadership came in the summer of 1993 with fresh local elections scheduled for the autumn, the city government organised an unofficial referendum on local autonomy, in which it gained a 97% majority in favour on an officially proclaimed 55% turnout of local voters. With the national government standing firm and refusing to adjudge the legality of the vote, and no support sociable from neighbouring Russia, a growing section of the local political elite appeared to take over that intransigent opposition to the new state order was blocking any prospect of achieving much needed economic renewal. These circles n ow called upon the existing leadership to give up power peacefully, which it did in October 1993 (Smith 2002b).At the time, the referendum of July 1993 was widely regarded as secessionist in intent. Available evidence, however, would seem to suggest that redrawing physical borders was not on the agenda the aim was rather to tip the overall political chemical equilibrium within Estonia in favour of the Russian-speaking part of the population and, in this way, to bring Estonia as a whole more firmly within the ambit of Russia and the CIS. In this way, the leadership hoped both to retain power and to restore the citys previous economic ties with the East as well as growth new links with the West (Smith 2002b).19 While Soviet constituted the wind identity marker for Estonias Russian-speaking population prior to 1991, this did not foreclose the development of a simultaneous strong identification with the specific territory of the Estonian SSR (widely identified in other republics as the Soviet West or the Soviet Abroad), and with the local place of mansion house. mingled with 1989 and 1991, the movement to bank Estonian sovereignty gained support from a world-shattering minority (perhaps as much as one third) of local Russian-speakers, who could offer to a vision of Estonia as an economic bridge between East and West.Such feelings were by no means absent in Narva, where the 1989 numerate revealed that seven out of 10 residents had actually been born in Estonia (Kirch et al. 1993, p. 177). redden so, the collapse of the USSR needs created something of an identity void as far as Estonias Russian-speakers were concerned. Despite perceptions of discrimination, recent survey work has confirmed a growing identification with the Estonian state (Kolst2002 Budryte 2005 Ehin 2007) as well as significant support for EU membership. Most Russians, however, have scarcely been able to secernate themselves with any notion of Estonian national community, with local pla ce of residence and ethnicity serving as the prime markers of identity (Ehin 2007). Despite having an obvious cultural affinity with Russia and with the transnational Russian community across the territory of the former Soviet Union, a population raised in the different socio-cultural setting of the Baltic has found it hard to conceive of actually living in Russia or to identify politically with the contemporary Russian state. It is with this complex identity that the post-1993 leadership in Narva has had to reckon.The Estonian law on local elections passed in May 1993 stipulated that non-citizens could vote but not stand for office. This excluded much of the local population from desire election, including a substantial proportion of the Soviet-era leadership. Ahead of the October 1993 poll in Narva, however, the state was able to co-opt elements of the local political elite through a process of accelerated naturalisation on the causal agency of special work rendered to the sta te. The elections of October 1993 saw a strong turnout by local voters, and brought to power a coalition of locally based parties and divert groups. The city governments select during the period 1993 2005a period when the national-level Centre Party attained the dominant position within local politicswere far more ready than their predecessors to embrace the new political economy of post-socialism, and thus better placed to cooperate both with central government and with Western partners within the wider Baltic Sea area. In this regard, the commemoration of the Battle of Narva and the trigger of the Swedish Lion can be understood as an endeavor to create a narrative of the citys past capable of underpinning growing ties with Sweden in the present. These ties assumed a particular significance after 1995, when Swedish material firm Boras Wfveri purchased a 75% stake in Narvas historic Kreenholm Mill, then the citys second-largest employer. According to Raivo Murd, the ethnic Est onian who served as Mayor of Narva from 1993 to 1996, the investment was evidence that Narva was finally first gear to shed the Red image that had prevailed under the former political dispensation.20In a clear sign of its determination to break with the Soviet past, the city government appointed in October 1993 removed Estonias last remaining statue of Lenin, which had remained standing in the central Peters Square in Narva during the first two years of Estonian independence. The subsequent period has seen the installation of new monuments commemoratinginter aliathe victims of Stalinist deportations during the 1940s and key moments in the transition to Estonian independence during 1917 20. The Old Narva Society founded by surviving pre-1944 residents of Narva also put up a number of commemorative plaques marking the sites of churches and other key buildings from the pre-war city. yet the post-1993 political eIssues of War Monuments in EstoniaIssues of War Monuments in EstoniaEmpt y Spaces and the Value of Symbols Estonias War of Monuments from Another Angle* This article is the first published output from British Academy small research grant ref. SG-39197, entitled Public Monuments, Commemoration and the Renegotiation of Collective Identities Estonia, Sweden and the Baltic WorldSince the summer of 2004, the new EU member state of Estonia has been in the throes of what is described as a War of Monuments. The events in question began in the town of Lihula in western Estonia, where a veterans group erected a stone tablet commemorating those Estonians who in World War Two donned German uniform and fought on the eastern front against the USSR. Bearing the inscription To Estonian men who fought in 1940 1945 against Bolshevism and for the restoration of Estonian independence, the Lihula stone became the latest of several monuments commemorating a group that most Estonians today regard as freedom fighters. In this case, however, the soldier depicted bore SS insigni a. Hardly surprisingly, this fact elicited widespread international condemnation, notably from Russia, the EU and Jewish organisations. The groups behind the monument insisted that the men in question had had no truck with Nazism, and had only enlisted as a last resort in order to obtain access to arms with which to repel the Soviet invader. The display of the SS insignia nevertheless disregarded the taboo that surrounds the display of Nazi symbols in todays Europe. Also, while the vast majority of Estonian SS legionnaires did indeed sign up only in 1944 as the Soviet army advanced into their homeland, at least some had previously belonged to auxiliary police battalions which have been implicated in Nazi atrocities.1Concerned to limit potential damage to Estonias international reputation, the government of the day ordered the removal of the monument. The police operation to carry out this order on 2 September 2004 nevertheless provoked clashes with local residents, while the politic al fallout from the episode contributed to the fall of Prime Minister Juhan Parts several months later. Critics of the government action argued that if the Lihula monument was to be construed as a glorification of totalitarianism, then the same logic should be applied to Soviet monuments that had been left standing following the restoration of Estonian independence in 1991. Singled out in this regard was the Bronze Soldier on Totildenismgi in central Tallinna post-war monument erected on the unmarked grave of Soviet troops who fell during the taking of the city in 1944. For the vast majority of Estonians, the arrival of the Soviet Army signalled the replacement of one brutal occupying regime by another, which quickly resumed the arrests, executions and large-scale deportations previously witnessed during the first year of Soviet rule in 1940 41. This remains the dominant perception amongst Estonians today. The leaders of post-Soviet Russia, by contrast, have adhered steadfastly to the Soviet-era view of these events as marking the liberation of Estonia from fascism. The defeat of the Nazis during 1941 45 remains central to Russias self-understanding in the post-Soviet era itscurrent leaders emphatically deny that the events of 1940 and 1944 in the Baltic states constituted a Soviet occupation, and refuse to acknowledge the suffering which the inhabitants of these countries experienced at the hands of the Soviet regime. Commentators in Russia have emphasised that they will brook no alternative interpretations of the Soviet Unions role in the events of 1939 45, and have therefore characterised calls for the removal of the Totildenismgi monument as a manifestation of support for fascism.For many of the ethnic Russians who today make up nearly half of Tallinns population, the Bronze Soldier has also remained a locus of identification, providing the site for continued unofficial commemorations on 9 May, which was celebrated as Victory Day during the Soviet perio d. Red paint was thrown over the monument just prior to 9 May 2005, when several other Soviet war memorials were also attacked across the country, and a German military cemetery desecrated in Narva. The following year, this date again elicited tensions local Russian youth mounted round-the-clock surveillance at the Bronze Soldier, while an Estonian nationalist counter-demonstration led to scuffles on 9 May (Alas 2006a). The monument was subsequently cordoned off by police pending a decision on its future. This formed the object of vigorous political debate ahead of the March 2007 parliamentary elections. Matters relating to the establishment and upkeep of public monuments in post-Soviet Estonia have for the most part fallen to local municipalities. In late 2006, however, new legislation was adopted giving central government the power to override local decision making in this regard. This formulation was motivated expressly by a desire to remove the monument and the soldiers remains from the centre of Tallinn to the more peripheral setting of the military cemetery on the citys outskirts (Alas 2006a, 2006b, 2006c Ranname 2006). The subsequent removal of the monument in late April 2007 provided the occasion for large-scale rioting in central Tallinn. On 9 May 2007 hundreds of people visited the monument at its new location in order to lay flowers.Issues of past or memory politics2have assumed a growing prominence in recent scholarly work on Estonia and the other Baltic states, with a number of authors also highlighting the apparently divergent views of the past held by Estonians and Estonian Russians, and the obstacles that this poses in terms of societal integration (Hackmann 2003 Budryte 2005 Onken 2003, 2007a, 2007b). Publicly sited monuments are evidently central to any discussion of such issues as recent events in Estonia have shown, they frequently act as catalysts eliciting both official and unsanctioned expressions of collective identity (Burch 2002a, 20 04).3 Thus far, however, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to monuments within the relevant academic literature on Estonia. This article is intended as a contribution in this regard, but it approaches the issue from a slightly different angle. The War of Monuments has focused political and media attention upon two different cases, one involving a settlement that is predominantly ethnically Estonian by population (Lihula) and the other a capital city (Tallinn) that is almost equally divided between Estonians and Russians. This article shifts the focus to the overwhelmingly Russian-speaking city of Narva, which today sits on Estonias border with the Russian Federation. In particular, our study examines the local politics surrounding the Swedish Lion monument (see Figure 1), which was erected in the city in November 2000 on the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Narva between Sweden and Russia.The Lion monument relates to a past that is far less immediate than the events o f 1940 45, but which, as we demonstrate, is still highly salient to contemporary identity politics within Estonia. How, for instance, was the commemoration of a decisive Swedish victory over Russia framed and debated in a town where ethnic Russians and other Russian-speakers constitute 96% of the population? Equally significantly, todays Lion is depicted as the successor to a similar monument erected in 1936 during the period of Estonias inter-war independence. The reappearance of this symbol could therefore potentially be understood as part of a state-sponsored effort to banish the Soviet past and reconnect with a past Golden Age. Once again, one wonders how this was interpreted by a local population that was established in Narva as a direct consequence of the Soviet takeover and which, by dint of the legal continuity principle, mostly did not obtain the automatic right to Estonian citizenship after 1991.4 Who then decided to erect the Lion monument, and why? What form did the com memoration of November 2000 take, and what are the main lines of public debate that have surrounded it? The current article will address these questions, and will also seek to link the Narva case to broader conceptual issues of identity politics and post-communist transition, particularly the current debate surrounding the possibilities for the development of a tamed liberal/multicultural nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe.5Past politics and post-communismThe dramatic events that have occurred in Europe over the past two decades have entailed a profound redefinition of collective identities at a variety of scalesnational, supranational, regional and local. The end of the Cold War, the demise of the USSR, and the consequent processes of EU and NATO enlargement, all occurring within the overall context of economic globalisation and growing movement of population, have led communities and groups across the continent to revisit existing understandings of who We are and where We a re going. Since historical memory is an essential component in the construction of collective identity, this process has necessarily involved renegotiation of the Past as well as debates concerning the Present and Future. Like all forms of identity politics, such memory work is contested, being embedded in complex power relations that determine what is remembered (or forgotten) by whom, and for what end (Gillis 1994, p. 3). In a similar vein, Graham et al. (2000, pp. 17 18) remind us that heritage is time-specific and thus its meaning(s) can be altered as texts are re-read in changing times, circumstances and constructs of place and scale. Consequently, it is inevitable that such knowledges are also fields of contestation.6Publicly sited monuments offer a particularly useful way into researching this phenomenon, since they provide us with a tangible manifestation of some memory work process. The memorial function of such objects can take the form of carefully choreographed gatheri ngs at times of heightened political awareness, or precise moments of commemorative anniversaries. Wreaths might be laid silence observed political rallies enacted pageants performed. Other actions might be characterised more by spontaneity collective grief at a sudden, tragic event, or an iconoclastic attack on a memorial construed in negative terms. Individuals and groups will attach different, often mutually exclusive meanings to particular monuments. Moreover, such meanings are shifting and contingent what constitutes an eloquent memorial at one particular moment in time (for instance during an annual commemoration) might become a mute, invisible monument for the rest of the year. In this regard, being ignored is as significant as being noticed.7 Political changes in the present can radically alter the import of a memorial, without any physical change on its part. This reiterates that the context of the monument is intrinsic to meaning. Context, however, can also be physically r endered, as with the shifting of a memorial/monument from some focal point to somewhere more peripheral and less visible.Issues of collective identity have proved especially challenging in those states that have been created or recreated following the collapse of the USSR. These are for the most part configured as classic unitary nation states, and yet in nearly all cases, processes of state and nation building have been effectuated on the basis of societies that are deeply polyethnic or multinational in character (Brubaker 1996 Smith et al. 1998 Smith 1999). Moreover, nearly all of the states in question have painful pasts with which they need to come to terms (Budryte 2005, p. 1). In relation to this region, Paul Gready (2003, p. 6) reminds us that stripped of the fossilising force of Cold War politics, nationalism has become central to political transitions, both as a means and an end. Narratives of history that focus exclusively on the titular nationality and its subjugation and suffering at the hands of former colonial regimes invariably elicit opposition from minority groups, which can easily frame their own exclusivist narratives of history along the same lines. Indeed, as the Estonian case exemplifies very well, conflicting narratives of the past can be seen as an integral part of the triadic nexus of nationalist politicsthe relationship between nationalising states, national minorities and external national homelandsdiscerned by Rogers Brubaker in his 1996 work Nationalism Reframed (Pettai 2006).In using the past for present purposes, political and intellectual elites in the Baltic and other Central and Eastern European states have also had to take account of the requirements of integration with the European Union, which in the Estonian and Latvian cases especially, has entailed significant changes to the direction of nation-building (Smith 2002a, 2002b, 2003a, 2003b, 2005 Budryte 2005 Kelley 2004 Galbreath 2005). EU-supported state integration strate gies launched at the start of the twenty-first century have set the goal of creating integrated multicultural democracies which will enable representatives of the large non-titular, non-citizen population to preserve certain aspects of their distinct culture and heritage as they undergo integration into the polity and the dominant societal culture (Lauristin Heidmets 2002). According to a number of authors writing on the politics of the past and of memory, these efforts to promote an integrated multicultural society necessarily require all the parties involved to engage with a process of democratising history. Democratisation in this context would imply that history is no longer used extensively for political purposes, alternative readings are allowed to challenge dominant master narratives, a plurality of guardians of memory is tolerated, and that rather than merely stressing the suffering endured by ones own nation, historical narratives recognise that other groups suffered equal ly, and that the nation in question served as both a bystander and a perpetrator as regards the suffering of others (see Onken 2003, 2007a Budryte 2005).A significant step in this direction came during 1998, when all three Baltic states established historical commissions.8 Composed of academic experts from home and abroad (in the Estonian case exclusively the latter), these bodies have been called upon to produce an independent assessment of events during the Nazi and Soviet occupations of 1940 91, and have already begun to publish their findings (Onken 2007b). However, developments such as the Estonian War on Monuments and the Baltic Russian dispute over the commemoration held in Moscow to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War Two (Onken 2007a) underline the extent to which the past is still underpinning conflictual political dynamics in the present. In this regard, Russias increasing reliance on the Soviet past for nation-building purposes and its indiscriminate blanket accusations of fascist tendencies in the Baltic states prompt Baltic politicians to insist that Soviet communism should join Nazism as one of the great evils against which contemporary European values should be defined.As is the case with other aspects of post-communist transition, however, a focus on the state level tells us only so much about the renegotiation of identity in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. In this highly complex multi-ethnic environment, the sub-state regional level cannot be disregarded (Batt 2002). A focus on the sub-state level appears especially apposite as far as the study of Estonias public monuments is concerned, for, until now at least, decisions in this area have rested with local rather than with national government. Furthermore, one can point to different political logics that obtain at national and local level. As a result of the citizenship law adopted in the aftermathof independence, ethnic Estonians have constituted a comfortable majority of the national electorate during 1992 2007. The local election law of 1993, however, stipulates that while citizens alone can run for office, all permanent residents have the right to vote, regardless of citizenship status. This has meant that the ethnic composition of the electorate has in some cases been wholly different at municipal level.In this regard, the outright repudiation of the Soviet past displayed by local elites in Lihula stands in marked contrast to trends observable in the capital Tallinn, where Russian-speakers make up almost half the population, and Russian and pro-Russian parties, such as the Centre Party (Keskerakond), have been able to obtain a significant foothold in local politics. This contrast became evident not least in 1995, when the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II brought calls for the removal of the Bronze Soldier. The city council, however, tried instead to imbue this monument with an alternative meaning a Soviet-era plaque re ferring to the liberation of Tallinn by the Red Army in 1944 was replaced by one that reads simply to the fallen of World War Two. This step can be read as an effort to inculcate some kind of shared understanding of a highly contentious past within a deeply multi-ethnic setting. What trends, however, can one identify in the more homogeneously Russian periphery that is Narva?Estonias new best friend. The rediscovery of Estonias Swedish past The return of the Swedish Lion monument to Narva, as one local newspaper described it (Sommer-Kalda 2000), can be seen in many ways as the culmination of a process of Swedish re-engagement with the eastern Baltic Near Abroad that began in 1990 with the establishment of a Swedish consulate in Tallinn. With considerable financial resources now being made available to support processes of economic and political transition in Estonia, Swedish cultural attach Hans Lepp began to explore how past cultural links might be utilised in the service of what he has termed soft diplomacy.9Historic ties with Scandinavia have assumed an important place within the discourse of the ruling ethnic Estonian political elite since the 1990s, where they have been used to support the notion of a Return to Europeor, more broadly, a Return to the Western World following the end of Soviet occupation (Lauristin et al. 1997 Smith 2001, 2003a, 2003b). Within this framework, the period 1561 1710, when Sweden progressively extended its dominion over much of the territory of present-day Estonia and Latvia, is remembered as the Happy Swedish time, which is said to have brought about a considerable improvement in the lot of the Estonian peasantry, before serfdom was returned to its former rigour following entry to the Russian empire. Hans Lepp and his diplomatic colleagues were alive to the possibility of trading on this feeling of goodwill in order to make Sweden Estonias best friend in the Baltic region, with all that this implied in terms of political and e conomic influence.10It quickly became apparent, however, that Swedish assistance was most needed in Narva and its surrounding region of Ida-Virumaa. Quite apart from the socio-economic and environmentalchallenges posed by this largely Russian-populated border region, rising nationalism in neighbouring Russia raised the prospect that the local inhabitants might look eastwards towards Moscow rather than westwards towards Tallinn, with drastic implications for regional stability and security.11 In this specific context history had particular potential as a resource, given the important place of the Battle of Narva of 1700 within the Swedish historical imagination. Although the opening salvo in a disastrous war that saw the Baltic provinces ceded to Russia,12 the first Battle of Narva was nevertheless a remarkable victory by the troops of King Charles XII (often referred to as the Lion of the North) against the numerically superior forces of Peter the Great. In this respect, Eldar Efend iev, who as Mayor of Narva planned the November 2000 commemoration of the battle, claimed in an interview with the authors that Swedes know three datesthe birthday of Gustav Vasa the birthday of the present King and the date of the Battle of Narva.13 The significance of the latter event had been seen already in the inter-war period with the installation of a Lion monument on the battlefield site in 1936.14 Already prior to his appointment as cultural attach in 1990, Hans Leppthen Curator of the art collections at the Swedish Royal Palace in Stockholmsuggested to Efendiev (at that time Head of the Narva Museum) that the restoration of the Lion monument might help to foster closer ties between Narva and Sweden in the present. Lepp subsequently pursued the idea of restoring the Lion with Narva city council in his roles as Swedish cultural attach to Estonia and member of the Swedish Institute. Not surprisingly, however, planning the commemoration of a decisive Swedish victory over Russi a was a potentially fraught endeavour in a town where Russian-speakers now made up 96% of the population.Narva Eastern, Western or in-between?The more essentialising geopolitical discourses of the post-Cold War era would see Narva as sitting on the westward side of the border that divides Western Christianity from Eastern Orthodoxy. Those who discern a Huntingdonian civilisational fault line between Estonia and Russia could point by way of evidence to the presence of two great fortressesone German, one Russianon the respective banks of the Narova River that separates Narva from its neighbouring settlement of Ivangorod and which today marks the state border with the Russian Federation. Not unnaturally, however, the citys past is rather more complex. As noted on the current website of the city government, Narva has not merely served as a defensive outpost and site of struggle between competing regional powers, but has also constituted a locus for trade and interaction between West and East, not least during the period when the city belonged to the Hanseatic League.15 From its foundation in the twelfth century to 1558, Narva did indeed constitute the easternmost point of the province of Estland, which was ruled first by the Danes and later by the German Livonian Order. Neighbouring Ivangorod takes its name from Tsar Ivan III, who ordered the construction of a fortress on the western border of his realm following Muscovys annexation of Novgorod in the late fifteenth century. Muscovy subsequently conquered Narva during the mid-sixteenth century Livonian wars, controlling the city from 1558 to 1581. The city then came under Swedish rule for 120 years following the Livonian Wars, a period which is described on the webpage of todays city government as Narvas Golden Age.16For nearly three and a half centuries, Narva and Ivangorod functioned in effect as a single composite settlement, first under Swedish rule and then later during the tsarist period, when Narva came und er the joint jurisdiction of the Estland and Saint Petersburg Gubernii of the Russian Empire. The conjoined status of the two towns persisted after 1917, when the inhabitants of the Narva district voted in a July referendum to join the province of Estland created following the February Revolution.17 After a brief spell of Bolshevik control during late 1918 to early 1919, when Narva functioned as the seat of the abortive Estonian Workers Commune, both towns were incorporated into the Estonian Republic under the terms of the 1920 Treaty of Tartu. It was only after the Soviet occupation in 1945 that the border was redrawn so as to place Ivangorod in the territory of the Russian Republic of the USSR. Although this division was little more than an administrative formality within a Soviet context, the frontier revision set the scene for the establishment of a fully functioning state border between the two towns after 1992.The Narva that emerged from the Soviet period is almost completely unrecognisable from the one that existed prior to World War Two. Previously characterised as the baroque jewel of Northern Europe, the city was quite literally reduced to rubble in 1944 during fierce fighting between German and Soviet forces in eastern Estonia. While at least some historic buildingsnotably the castle and the town hallwere restored, the ruins were for the most part demolished and the city entirely remodelled on the Soviet plan. As was the case with Knigsberg (Kaliningrad), Narva was inhabited by both different inhabitants and a different ideology after 1945 (Sezneva 2002, p. 48). The previous residents, having been evacuated by the occupying Nazi regime, were not allowed to return by its Soviet successor, and were replaced by workers from neighbouring Russia, who oversaw a process of Soviet-style industrialisation in the region. Today, Estonians make up less than 5% of the towns inhabitants.As part of Narvas transformation into a Soviet place, new monuments were erec ted to commemorate the fallen of the Great Patriotic War and of the brief period of rule by the Estonian Workers Commune.18 All remaining traces of the pre-war Estonian Republic were swept away following the Soviet re-conquest of 1944. The 1936 Swedish Lion monument, which had been erected at the approaches to the city during a visit by the Swedish Crown Prince, was destroyed by artillery fire and the bronze lion removed by German forces during their retreat. This monument did not reappear under Soviet rule. The authorities did, however, restore and maintain objects linked to the citys Russian past, such as the two tsarist-era monuments to Russian soldiers killed in the battles of 1700 and 1704.As the movement for Estonian independence gathered momentum between 1988 and 1991, Narva gained a reputation as a bastion of support for the maintenance of Soviet power. The city government that came to office in December 1989 set itself resolutely against political change, demanding autonomy for north-east Estonia within the context of a renewed Soviet federation and, in August 1991, voicing support for the abortive Moscow coup which precipitated the collapse of the USSR. The Council was promptly dissolved in the aftermath of Estonian independence yet, remarkably, its former leaders were allowed to stand in new elections, and were returned to power in October 1991, albeit on a turnout of only 30%. As ethnic tensions mounted in Estonia between 1991 and 1993, and Narvas economy went into freefall, local leaders again set themselves in opposition to central government policies that were designed to engineer a decisive political and economic break with the Soviet past. The last stand of the Soviet-era leadership came in the summer of 1993 with fresh local elections scheduled for the autumn, the city government organised an unofficial referendum on local autonomy, in which it gained a 97% majority in favour on an officially proclaimed 55% turnout of local voters. With the n ational government standing firm and refusing to acknowledge the legality of the vote, and no support forthcoming from neighbouring Russia, a growing section of the local political elite appeared to accept that intransigent opposition to the new state order was blocking any prospect of achieving much needed economic renewal. These circles now called upon the existing leadership to give up power peacefully, which it did in October 1993 (Smith 2002b).At the time, the referendum of July 1993 was widely regarded as secessionist in intent. Available evidence, however, would seem to suggest that redrawing physical borders was not on the agenda the aim was rather to tip the overall political balance within Estonia in favour of the Russian-speaking part of the population and, in this way, to bring Estonia as a whole more firmly within the ambit of Russia and the CIS. In this way, the leadership hoped both to retain power and to restore the citys previous economic ties with the East as well as developing new links with the West (Smith 2002b).19 While Soviet constituted the principal identity marker for Estonias Russian-speaking population prior to 1991, this did not preclude the development of a simultaneous strong identification with the specific territory of the Estonian SSR (widely identified in other republics as the Soviet West or the Soviet Abroad), and with the local place of residence. Between 1989 and 1991, the movement to assert Estonian sovereignty gained support from a significant minority (perhaps as much as one third) of local Russian-speakers, who could subscribe to a vision of Estonia as an economic bridge between East and West.Such feelings were by no means absent in Narva, where the 1989 census revealed that seven out of 10 residents had actually been born in Estonia (Kirch et al. 1993, p. 177). Even so, the collapse of the USSR inevitably created something of an identity void as far as Estonias Russian-speakers were concerned. Despite perceptions of discrimination, recent survey work has confirmed a growing identification with the Estonian state (Kolst2002 Budryte 2005 Ehin 2007) as well as significant support for EU membership. Most Russians, however, have scarcely been able to identify themselves with any notion of Estonian national community, with local place of residence and ethnicity serving as the prime markers of identity (Ehin 2007). Despite having an obvious cultural affinity with Russia and with the transnational Russian community across the territory of the former Soviet Union, a population raised in the different socio-cultural setting of the Baltic has found it hard to conceive of actually living in Russia or to identify politically with the contemporary Russian state. It is with this complex identity that the post-1993 leadership in Narva has had to reckon.The Estonian law on local elections passed in May 1993 stipulated that non-citizens could vote but not stand for office. This excluded much of the local populat ion from seeking election, including a substantial proportion of the Soviet-era leadership. Ahead of the October 1993 poll in Narva, however, the state was able to co-opt elements of the local political elite through a process of accelerated naturalisation on the grounds of special services rendered to the state. The elections of October 1993 saw a strong turnout by local voters, and brought to power a coalition of locally based parties and interest groups. The city governments elected during the period 1993 2005a period when the national-level Centre Party attained the dominant position within local politicswere far more ready than their predecessors to embrace the new political economy of post-socialism, and thus better placed to cooperate both with central government and with Western partners within the wider Baltic Sea area. In this regard, the commemoration of the Battle of Narva and the installation of the Swedish Lion can be understood as an attempt to create a narrative of the citys past capable of underpinning growing ties with Sweden in the present. These ties assumed a particular significance after 1995, when Swedish textile firm Boras Wfveri purchased a 75% stake in Narvas historic Kreenholm Mill, then the citys second-largest employer. According to Raivo Murd, the ethnic Estonian who served as Mayor of Narva from 1993 to 1996, the investment was proof that Narva was finally beginning to shed the Red image that had prevailed under the former political dispensation.20In a clear sign of its determination to break with the Soviet past, the city government appointed in October 1993 removed Estonias last remaining statue of Lenin, which had remained standing in the central Peters Square in Narva during the first two years of Estonian independence. The subsequent period has seen the installation of new monuments commemoratinginter aliathe victims of Stalinist deportations during the 1940s and key moments in the transition to Estonian independence during 1917 20. The Old Narva Society founded by surviving pre-1944 residents of Narva also put up a number of commemorative plaques marking the sites of churches and other key buildings from the pre-war city.Yet the post-1993 political e